


catch and release

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: Drama, F/M, Kidnapping, Post-Canon, Romance, S&M, married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:24:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy is on a case when Ned goes missing, and she has to track him down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	catch and release

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OzQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OzQueen/gifts).



Nancy had last seen him from the doorway of a tiny bakery on a side street in Paris. His coat had been buttoned up, scarf wrapped tight about his throat, his arms spread with palms toward her, walking a few steps backward on his heels so that he still faced her. He had been grinning. She had been grinning back, knowing she looked foolish, not giving a damn.

"You promise to wait here?"

She had pretended a moment's deliberation. "As long as you'll be back soon."

But he hadn't. He simply hadn't. He had vanished in the time it took her to select and purchase two delicate, elaborate pastries and window-shop her way down to the jewelry store. Eight minutes at the least, twelve at the outside. The cashier, after a round of intense grilling in Nancy's slightly rusty French, had conceded that yes, her handsome companion had nearly started into the store, then turned, as though at the sound of someone calling him. And that was all.

The bag of pastries was crumpled, the thought of eating one making her stomach turn, as her slow, thoughtful steps took her to the nearest gendarmie. Nancy tossed the bag into a trash can and kept walking.

If she went to the authorities, he'd probably be killed.

If she didn't go to the authorities, he was dead anyway.

\--

She had been accustomed to his never being accustomed to her life. When she came home late, battered, bandaged, a new lump or scar or set of x-rays to her name, he had been bright with worry, livid with concern. She had always been able to sense it, at the tip of his tongue, the kind of ultimatum that would break them both. Quit this line of work, stop pretending she was immortal, impervious, untouchable, and find some other way to do what she loved, without risking herself.

And then one day he had just stopped asking, and that had somehow hurt more than his panic-stricken gazes and tender concern. Without talking about it, she had stopped taking those cases. She was just on a few people's speed-dials, still. There was nothing she could do about it. She could change who she was, but not who she had been.

Gregor had sworn this was a tiny job, miniscule, barely a blip on the radar screen, but her talents were not so diminished and her reputation not so shrunk as to make that ring anywhere near truthful. She'd accepted anyway, glad to be of help, to fit inside her old skin again, if only for the time it took to intercept a courier-drop and make one of her own. Ned, who loved her, who would never believe her if she admitted the truth but was slowly accepting over time that maybe, just maybe, she was beginning to change, Ned would never have to know.

There was nothing better for ruining that dream than having some French thugs stage a kidnapping in retribution for a job and skill set Nancy no longer claimed to have.

\--

She bought a detailed street map of Paris and spread it out on their low cheap hotel card table, noting the intersections where she had been, where he had been sighted, where she had gone through with her own assignment. The couple in the next room were fighting in low, gutteral French, tones of disgust and vituperation. She and Ned were supposed to be getting away from everything, the tedium of their lives. Planning a rescue operation certainly qualified.

She dressed in black, wearing a long dress she had been planning to wear to dinner with Ned that night, and took a taxi ride to a few abandoned warehouses, stopping to check each for signs of life. With another job, she would have support, a team, even a phone number to call and cajole help from someone. But she was alone in this; part of the simplicity of the dead drop, part of the simplicity in her own anonymity. No one should have questioned her. She wasn't on the radar. At least, she wasn't supposed to be.

He had been missing for thirteen hours, forty-two minutes, and eleven seconds when she folded a note into a newspaper and put it in the same spot she had found and intercepted the first dead drop. Then she went back to the hotel and waited, staring up at the ceiling, and when she woke, barely having registering that she had slept at all, she could taste him on her lips, could feel the places where their skin had rubbed almost raw against each other's the night before, could feel the faint life of that second heartbeat his breath against her ear or his hand on the small of her back could coax inside her thighs.

The maid brought a breakfast she hadn't ordered and a note wishing her anything but a pleasant stay. But they were paying attention, she told herself, as she ignored the food and brushed her teeth. She stared at her reflection, dead-eyed, unseeing, and felt his breath against the side of her throat, like his ghost was already haunting her.

\--

Some women kept the rooms the same. It was a form of sacrifice, a vigil kept hollow. Nancy kept the room the same because there was always a chance that Ned would escape and come back to it, but she also took a room three Metro stops away. She had stopped being the kind of person who could do this, who could blacken knives and plan infiltrations. She had done it for him. Now she was doing it for him again, knowing the entire time that if she did find him, when she did find him, he might never be able to look her in the eye again.

Having another room, being able to disappear, made sense.

She had stopped talking. She was afraid the sound of her own voice would sicken her.

She didn't sleep and at three o'clock in the morning of the second night he was gone, there was a nightclub (there was always a nightclub, with these people), and she bluffed and cajoled her way into the back, her red-gold hair hidden under a touseled wig the color of strong coffee. For Ned to be here meant that Spence was involved, and if Spence was involved, she should have been three countries away, quickly heading for the security of oceans and continents between. Spence had not appreciated her turning his staff or her interruption of his cash flow.

Ned was in a broad dusty nightmare of a room, where naked mannequin torsos and limbs were scattered in haphazard piles. In the corner, behind a stack of boxes of twine and food coloring and batteries, she found him, tied to a chair, gagged, blindfolded. The chair's legs had scraped indentions into the floor. He was sleeping or drugged; when she touched his arm he started, head jerking up, chair jumping against the floor.

"Shh, shh," she warned him, and he went stock-still, breathing noisily through his mouth after she removed the gag. "You all right?"

Then the guards came in, a few minutes earlier than she had expected them to figure her out, and Ned, tied to a chair, had to watch what happened after. She used all her knives, a creaking jump-rope, and her stiletto heel, and at the end of it she stood panting with her fists up and her hair falling into her face, challenging a room of unconscious or otherwise incapacitated men.

"Good to see you too," he whispered.

\--

His lips were cracked dry. She kept her attention divided between him and the view through the cab's rear window, and as the streetlights passed over him he kept his eyes low and he winced with every pothole and bump in the road.

"You hungry?"

"Starving," he admitted, his head still down.

The McDonald's was still crowded, even so late. He scanned the menu and she stood behind him, her lips thinning when she saw the thick bands of dried blood that had soaked through the back of his shirt. She ran a fingertip lightly over one and he winced away from her.

At a small table in a corner they sat facing each other, as Ned frowned at his burger, and Nancy just studied his eyes. She was leaning over, hands at her ankle, when Ned glanced up, and Nancy's breath caught. "Look..."

She held his gaze until they were both quiet. "I need to go back to the hotel and get our things and we need to get the hell out of town," she said, keeping her voice low. "So reach under the table."

Ned met her eyes and everything in his expression promised that there would be more later, much more later, and she would not enjoy it, but after a beat he reached under the table and she put a gun into his hand. "The safety's on, but if anyone comes through that door who you recognize, or who seems to recognize you, defend yourself. And I'll be back for you in under fifteen minutes. If I'm more than five minutes late, go directly to the airport and get the hell out of here."

He didn't ask any questions, and that scared her. He just looked resigned. It was like nothing she had done, nothing she had tried to change made a damn bit of difference, because as far as he was concerned, she'd just done a better job of hiding it for a while.

And that, she knew, was probably true.

"I'm sorry."

He nodded, once. "Twenty minutes or I'll see you at home."

\--

She made it back in eighteen, worried the entire time that she'd return to find his table empty and no sign of him, again, or blood all over the floor and the blue strobe of police cars flashing in the windows. Instead, he was still sitting at the same table, only his soda in front of him. He was pale, his dark eyes drowning in deep exhausted shadow. The hand on the table was trembling slightly.

He slept through their flight, and she just watched him. During the car ride back to their house she stopped by the nearest emergency room and watched the attending nurse clean, sanitize, and bandage the horrifying wounds on his back.

"What did they do?"

Ned shook his head, as she maneuvered the car into their driveway. "They told me you were in the next room and for every stroke of the whip I was getting, you were getting ten more. For all I knew it was true."

"Oh... God."

"I..." He shook his head, pushing his door open. "I don't know," he muttered, and slammed the door behind him.

\--

She called her office, and then she called the number Gregor had left for her, which, unsurprisingly, rang and rang without answer. She went through their clothes and put a load of laundry into the washer. She called her father and gave him some excuse about their returning early. When the jet lag finally overwhelmed her adrenaline, she walked slowly up the stairs, dreading every step she took.

He was asleep, on his side, his arm wrapped around his torso, taking up half his half of the bed. She touched his cheek and he started awake, violently.

"I'm going to take a shower," she whispered. "I'll sleep downstairs tonight and we'll talk in the morning, if you want."

He frowned, burying his face in the pillow, and Nancy found her pajamas and a clean towel and went to their shower, feeling lower than she had in a very long time.

\--

"Baby..."

In the guest bedroom the sheets felt cold and stiff and stale, and though she had lain down in thermal pajamas with her socks still on she shivered, and wished for Ned. She could almost hear his voice. She was hearing his voice.

"Was it worth it?"

"How could anything be worth that," she replied, her voice still thick with sleep, making small movements so she didn't disturb the small tight shell of warmth the blankets still held around her. Wearing a shirt just rubbed the healing skin over his scarred back, so he was barechested, and the color was faint but coming back into his face.

"Then why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it was supposed to be small, just a pickup and drop. That was all. I don't do this all the time," she went on, anticipating the next question, drawing her eyebrows together. "And this... God. I'd never risk you."

"Is our life not enough?"

"It's not about that. It's never been about that."

He shrugged. "Sometimes I forget how things were," he said, quietly, and she could see his face only in silhouette, the suggestion of shadow against the paler distant lights of Chicago through the bedroom window. "I think we've become very good at pretending we're normal. When I thought they were hurting you I practically begged them to let you go and just kill me, and when I woke up and saw you there..."

She waited for him to finish, dreading whatever would come next. "You probably wished I had been there. Instead."

"I would have died. For you. Without ever knowing why."

"For governments passing each other notes during class," she filled in, quietly. "That's all it is."

He met her eyes again. "Don't lie to me anymore," he said. "Please, just don't. Just trust me instead."

She bit her lip. "You don't like knowing."

"When that's the alternative," he winced at the pain that accompanied his shrug, "I'd rather know."

\--

"I didn't like lying to you."

She was spooned up with his knees tucked behind hers and they were pressed tight for warmth under the blankets. The night felt like it was never going to end. She was beginning to feel sympathetic welts on her back, tracing her spine, heavy and tender. In the dark, while she couldn't see his face, she could say these things and mean them.

"I don't believe you," he whispered, and her response died on her lips as he pushed her thermal underwear and panties down, so that her bare ass was against the front of his boxers. He cupped his palm over it. "And girls who tell lies get spanked."

"Oh," she said. "And girls who take their significant others to Paris and end what's supposed to be a sex and alcohol filled vacation with kidnapping and torture?"

"Those girls," she could feel his breath against the back of her neck, through her hair, and it made her shiver, and he pulled his hand away and she tensed in anticipation and the slightest thrill of fear, "deserve this," and he delivered a stinging slap to the curve of her ass that made her instinctually curl up while leaving her bare skin exposed.

"How will I know when I've been punished enough?"

He spanked her again, on the other cheek for good measure, before answering. "When you've had enough, bring me a condom and the lube."

She closed her eyes. She knew exactly what that meant. But his rules didn't say anything about distracting him, so she reached down and stripped her pants off, leaving her naked from the waist down. Then she snuggled her ass against his boxers. "If you say so," she murmured.

He smacked her hip, then twined his fingers in her hair and tugged hard so that her head fell back. "Hands and knees," he ordered, his mouth against her ear.

She waited until he released her, then sat up slowly, on her knees, her back still to him. She knew he could probably see her silhouette, so she pulled her shirt up by inches, until it was above her breasts, sliding her knees apart at the same time so that she was doing a half-split, her inner thighs sinking toward the bed. "It's not fair," she said. "You shouldn't have to just watch. What if you let me suck your cock?"

She knew that he couldn't hear those words without certain undeniable biological imperatives asserting themselves, and in short order she was under him, and he had her bent nearly double so he could continue smacking her ass while pushing his cock into her mouth. She flinched, tightening, with his every slap, and she knew her ass was probably already glowing red, but she reached up and gently cupped his balls, stroking them with the lightest brushes while the head of his cock slid down the curve of her tongue. God, she was wet. It was shameful how wet she was, just because he was smacking her.

The tip of his cock slid toward the back of her tongue, the scent of him strong, and Nancy sighed to herself. She hated deep-throating him, she hated deep-throating during 69... after one particularly hard smack, probably meant to encourage her, she let her legs fall open, knowing the proof of her arousal would be hard for him to ignore, and while he wavered she let her ass hit the bed again, legs open wide. She gently pushed him back so that his cock was only just inside her mouth, then swirled her tongue around the tip, her loosely closed fist gently pumping over his length. He was hot in her palm.

Then he traced his fingertip just over the thin curls of hair, down, brushing her perineum, and flicked the tip of his tongue against her exposed clit. "This mean you've had enough?" he whispered, while she panted, and then he blew gently, teasing the gleaming folds of flesh between her legs with the barest touch, and without conscious thought she simultaneously bucked her hips up and impatiently pulled down on his cock, urging him back into her mouth.

"Get the condom," he whispered, and then he brushed the ball of his thumb once, twice, a third time over her clit, before stopping cold. "Get the condom and I'll make you come."

He rolled away from her and she lay shivering for a moment before she could make her trembling limbs obey. Through the haze of her arousal she knew he was going to put her through hell before he fulfilled his promise, and when she scooted across the bed, her ass already felt bruised. She dug through the bedside table, gooseflesh rising on her bare arms, locating the bottle of lube easily and the condom by touch. Then she got on her hands and knees, facing the headboard, and buried her face in the pillow, waiting.

She didn't honestly care about anal, but she had to give him credit. He always used a lot of lube, a whole lot of lube, and he always made sure she was relaxed first, always went slowly, and always fingered her until she managed to come. Always meaning any night before tonight, she realized, and wondered if the spankings had really ended.

Then his fingers, slick with lube, slowly traced down the cleft of her ass, and despite herself she smiled. One day, when they were both spectacularly drunk, she was going to get him to bend her over the kitchen table and fuck her senseless, probably like this, because even if she didn't care about the actual penetration this way, the foreplay was amazing. She sighed as he traced the rim with his fingertips, her head falling forward. When she was actually rocking back against him, and God it felt dirty but it also felt so fucking right, she heard him stroke on one last layer of lube before he slowly began to push inside her, and when the head of his cock was nestled firmly in her ass he slid his hands over her hips and down to rest flat on her inner thighs. She had to concentrate on everything, now, on keeping her knees locked so she wouldn't fall, on the little gasps of his breath, on where his fingers, oh God, when half his length was inside her he suddenly slid three fingers up between her thighs and his thumb found her clit and she couldn't help it, she started to whimper, and if she wasn't sliding back to take more of his hard cock in her ass, she was sliding forward, moving her hips in a shallow circle that made him gasp for breath behind her as she stroked her clit against the tip of his thumbnail. Soon he matched his rhythm and she couldn't move, as his cock and fingers simultaneously thrust into her, and her inner thighs were spread wide against the bed and she was fucking his hand against the mattress, her toes curling as his fingers curled inside her, and he was fucking her harder and harder. When her orgasm finally broke, her ass clenching hard against his cock even as his fingers felt the undulation inside her, she held herself stock still but he kept flicking her clit with his thumb, and she screamed as she rocked into it, because even though she knew she had to stop or she was going to explode, every stroke of his thumb felt like it made her come again.

Then he came, and after he slowly pulled out of her, slowly pulled his hand out from between her legs, she collapsed flat against the mattress, quivering, unable to move.

"Okay?"

Nancy snickered against the mattress. "Oh, so now you ask if I'm okay?" she replied, turning to watch as he pulled his boxers back on. She moved over and, shivering, pulled herself under the cooling blankets, searching for her utterly tangled pants, the shirt she had tossed carelessly to the carpet. "That was punishment?"

"Yeah, you did seem to be getting into it there at the end," Ned admitted, stretching out beside her. He hissed in pain, his face contorting, as he put weight on his back.

"Did you take those pain pills the nurse gave you?"

"Yeah, but the last one's probably worn off by now," he grimaced, turning onto his side. The welts were ugly, even in the dark.

Nancy bit her lip, sliding off the bed. "Pills in the bathroom?"

"Yeah."

Nancy was filling a paper cup of water from the tap when she heard the sudden sound of a door squeaking downstairs. It cut off just as abruptly, and she turned the water off, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. When she turned back, Ned was sitting up in bed, his brow furrowed.

"Where's your cell phone?"

"Downstairs, charging," he whispered back. "Can't we just—?"

She shook her head when he shrugged at their land line. "They'll have cut it," she answered, crossing the room swiftly to feel around in her sweater drawer. The hand she brought back out was holding a gun. "Stay here."

"Fuck that," Ned hissed back. "You've got a damn arsenal in here, give me something."

She heard a creak on a floorboard and made a dash for another drawer. In another moment she and Ned, guns drawn, headed out.

"Just tell us who has it, Miss Drew."

The lights flicked on and Nancy and Ned, blinking their eyes clear, looked down into the front hall to see four men flanking the speaker. Nancy felt Ned tense next to her at the sight of him, and knew she'd been right.

"That won't do you a bit of good now."

"Or who gave you in the information?"

Nancy shrugged. "I doubt that'd help you either," she told him. "Or make your boss any happier."

"I'll take whatever I can get, at this point," he said. "And please, don't bother introducing me, I think we've met."

Ned nodded. "Remember how I told you that I'd break your kneecaps if I ever saw you again?"

"He's serious," Nancy nodded, holding the man's gaze until the point when the bullet hit his knee and he went down, howling. "I won't be able to sit down at all tomorrow, and I'll hate to see what he's going to do to you."

The cops were called, of course, and by the time they were permitted into the house Nancy was docilely picking fragments of plaster out of her disheveled hair, was wrapped in a thick and modest robe, and Ned's was the only gun they found. No one was going to bother running ballistics on a bullet fragment in the kneecap of a petty German thug. Besides, she liked the way Ned's shoulders squared and his eyes grew hard when he talked about the men who had broken into his home and threatened his wife, and how he had defended her.

"Looks pretty cut and dried," the cop finished, snapping shut his notebook. "Armed home invasion. You two are pretty lucky. Could you come down to the station house and make a formal statement?"

"Sure," Nancy nodded. "Later today. After we've put the house back in order." She linked her arm through Ned's.

"We'll see you," Ned smiled, watching the rest of the team wander back out, leaving a bloodstained foyer and bullet-riddled walls behind.

Then he turned to Nancy. "I think that went well."

She smacked his ass, lightly, giggling as he gasped in shock. "Liar."

He wrapped his arms around her and picked her up, until they were eye-to-eye. "As long as the lies are between us," he answered, and kissed the tip of her nose. "Dear."


End file.
